Johansson, Björn

Abstract [en]

This paper describes the case of a decision-making process in a Swedish local government which was reorganizing the hosting of its software applications. One question raised is, how the attempt of improving governance and being more of an e-government, influences a hosting decision. To illustrate this, a retrospective case study is used. The case shows why the decision-making process started, how the decisions were taken, and finally the outcomes from that process.

It seems from our findings, that organizations planning to decentralize decision-making in order to make better decisions need to centralize parts of the IS work. Another outcome of the centralization may also be an increased ability of being an e-Government. The paper suggests a number of reasons for why an organization starts the process of reorganizing its software applications hosting and how these reasons are connected to e-Government. It is found that this reorganization in particular aims at improving the governance that the executive committee needs in order to make the correct decisions. This is in line with the government’s ambition to become more of an e-Government and in that way be able to provide better services for its citizens. However, the question remains if the decided option, to centralize and coordinate software applications hosting and ICT, was the best option or if another outcome would be preferable.